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News reports that fmpd submitted misleading reports.

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CALEA, a national agency lauded by law enforcement for its set of professional standards, has accredited the Fort Myers Police Department twice. What does this accreditation mean?

The Fort Myers Police Department had no strategy for violent crime, and discrimination was rampant throughout the department and in the community.

And yet it was accredited twice by a nationally recognized organization.

To maintain that accreditation, the department submitted annual reports that were contradictory and misleading, a News-Press investigation found.

And in light of the scathing Freeh Report, which confirmed heavy-handed policing and revealed allegations of police corruption, FMPD announced its move to “take a step back and address the issues” before seeking reaccreditation.

But that decision was more about avoiding further embarrassment if the department was denied, or on the other hand, protecting the accrediting commission from criticism for rewarding a troubled department, according to internal communications obtained by The News-Press.

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, also known as CALEA, is a Virginia-based organization that bills itself as the “gold standard in public safety.” Created in 1979, the organization is lauded among law enforcement for its professional standards to strengthen crime prevention while establishing fair and nondiscriminatory practices.

But CALEA tested the department's knowledge of these standards without verifying that they were being followed, the Freeh Report said. That's why the department was accredited.

Police corruption, toxic culture detailed in FMPD audit
FMPD began seeking accreditation in 2009. With CALEA’s reputation, should it have been able to notice problems before they became public? It depends on who you ask.

But records show the organization accredited a department that was struggling to get by with the little technology and manpower it had, and FMPD wasn't telling the full story about significant personnel issues.

It’s a three-year process to earn the accreditation, costing thousands of dollars along the way, and then agencies have to maintain it. That requires submitting annual reports, paying annual fees and scheduling an on-site assessment every three years. In the past eight years, Fort Myers has spent $60,720 to pursue and maintain the accreditation.

FMPD spent months preparing for its third on-site assessment scheduled for July. But in March, Maureen Buice, FMPD’s accreditation manager, sent a memo to Chief Derrick Diggs saying she felt it was “unlikely we will be successful in our attempts to be reaccredited.”

She felt this way for a number of reasons, she wrote, but some were more significant than others.

Buice told Diggs that she spoke with CALEA’s representative about her “concerns relating to our ability to prove that the Fort Myers Police Department has in fact complied with the accreditation standards from 2014-present, knowing (the Freeh Report) stated otherwise.”

She also expressed “concerns regarding the potential criticism of the Fort Myers Police Department and CALEA if we were to receive a reaccreditation award shortly after the release of (the Freeh Report).”

“If we attempt a reaccreditation award and are not ready,” she wrote, “we are taking an unnecessary risk and face possible embarrassment of having sanctions placed upon the agency or losing the award altogether.”

A CALEA representative provided FMPD with a boiler-plate public statement to explain why the department chose to withdraw from the process and start over from the beginning, records show.

Now, FMPD has three years to get its house in order before the next visit from CALEA, and Diggs has no plans of backing out.

“I strongly believe in CALEA accreditation,” he said. “You can’t sit here and say that your police department operates on a professional level, with professional standards and at the cutting edge of policing in this country unless you’re accredited.”

When asked about the department's history with accreditation, Diggs said he doesn't have time to worry about what other administrations did or did not do. He's been with FMPD for about a year now, and a recent progress report from the Freeh Group shows he is making improvements.

But could the thousands of dollars spent each year on accreditation be better spent elsewhere?

THE SIGNS

CALEA staff uses annual reports submitted by FMPD to prepare for on-site visits, Lt. Jay Rodriguez said. The annual reports, known as a "status report," are a self-assessment with mostly 'yes' or 'no' questions and spaces to elaborate.

But, year after year, FMPD submitted reports that complained about not having the money to replace ineffective technology and aging police cars. In 2015, it reported “the budget doesn’t allow for officers to be adequately equipped” to do their jobs.

Officers have complained of racial discrimination and preferential treatment within FMPD for more than a decade, but when asked about significant personnel matters, the department wasn’t telling the full story.

Accusations of discrimination, retaliation persist at Fort Myers Police Department. In July 2012, FMPD's status report shows the department settled a grievance by Officer O'Neil Kerr, who had been fired and later reinstated. But just a few months prior to that report, Kerr and two other officers had filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission based on racial discrimination and retaliation. There was no mention of that.

In July 2013, FMPD reported it had not experienced any significant personnel matters. But two lawsuits had been filed by officers just three months before that report was submitted.

The department filed five status reports during the time it was accredited and never mentioned any of the lawsuits or EOC complaints brought by its own members.

But Chief Diggs doesn't consider those lawsuits and complaints worth reporting because it happened all the time in Toledo, Ohio, where he spent 37 years. Sgt. Kevan Toney with the Toledo Police Department said in the past five years, active officers have filed five EOC complaints and seven complaints to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

Regardless, that should have been reported, said W. Craig Hartley Jr., CALEA's executive director.

Hartley declined to talk specifically about FMPD. But he said status reports are used to identify trends, and for that reason, lawsuits and EOC complaints filed by active officers should be addressed.

“Our model is set up on self-reporting,” Hartley said. “So the integrity has to lie within the agency to report accurately to us what’s going on. Periodically, you’ll find conflicts around that issue.”

Either way, personnel was listed as both a strength and a weakness, year after year.

“Personnel have (sic) endured reductions in staff, pay and benefits all while workloads have increased,” Buice wrote as a strength in 2015. “The ability … to meet the needs of community in many ways beyond simply answering calls for services.”

But in the very next paragraph, she wrote, “Staffing and resources are the main source (sic) of weaknesses to include not enough officers to handle the large call volumes, violent crimes.”

“It sounds like a, ‘We have enough to do the basics, but don’t ask for much more than that,’ kind of an answer,” said Luis Garcia-Fierro, assistant professor of criminal justice and forensic studies at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Self-assessment reports like these are not effective and often don’t tell the whole story, he said. Garcia-Fierro has experience helping other agencies gain accreditation.

THE VISIT

On-site assessments can last several days.

CALEA assessors have a process that involves interviews with the public, elected officials and city leadership, while also ensuring the agency is complying with a set of about 480 professional standards. Some assessors also scour news reports about the department, Hartley said.

Public documents show FMPD's on-site assessment in 2014 was no different.

Assessors confirmed the budget issues and noted it would be a challenge for the city to buy resources such as vehicles, computers, safety equipment and more advanced technology as it’s developed.

“It becomes increasingly difficult for the city to fund these requests without identifying new revenue sources or eliminating other expenditures,” the assessment report says.

But the assessors also commended FMPD in the same areas the Freeh Report criticized.

FMPD is “continuously engaged in efforts to reduce overall violent crime and arrest the perpetrators,” CALEA’s report said.

The assessors saw a drop in the number of homicides — 24 in 2012 and 10 in 2013 — and an increase in the clearance rate, or the rate of which official charges are brought against a suspect.

But the Freeh Report — which relied on confidential officer interviews — said FMPD had no strategy to deal with a drug-trafficking network that was operating with impunity, even killing witnesses. The department has 155 unsolved murders, and 48 of those have come in the past five years.

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The department was “extremely successful” in the goal of reducing crimes like murder, robbery or rape, according to CALEA. But the Freeh Report explained how officers were systematically under-reporting robbery to maintain the illusion that the city was a safe place.